


let's stay together

by r1ker



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 07:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6793045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker





	let's stay together

The case is clear, pure and simple – get the subject in your line of sight, pursue, encroach, capture. Jackson's done it so many times he's thought about skipping the in-person aspect of the job and having a robot do it for him but that'd cut out on the thrill he supposes. So he agrees, takes the manila folder under his arm and leaves the office with Holland close behind him nowhere near ready to miss out on the promise a new case brings.

 

One of the limited steps to the job is getting a hotel within walking distance of the subject's last known location. That's child's play to Holland, who's stayed in enough hotels in both his professional and personal life to have the very best ones' phone numbers known by heart. He's responsible for securing the room and he's pretty confident in letting Jackson know he was only able to get one.

 

With one bed.

 

"Are you honestly telling me that people were clamoring to get into the Knight's Inn so much that there was no way in hell you could get a single room with two double beds?" he asks Holland incredulously even as he's loading their overnight bags into his trunk. Holland leans near the gas cap and shrugs his shoulders for loss of much of anything to add to Jackson's outrage.

 

"If it makes you feel any better, I sprung for color TV and an extra set of towels," he tries to placate only to find that silence is his response. Jackson does seem to lighten up a little when he goes on and on about the continental breakfast and how it didn't at all look like it could give them food poisoning only a short time after consuming it. He even gives Jackson the best _I'm only getting away with this because I'm me_ smile and it seems to go over well.

 

Finally Jackson rolls his eyes, waves vaguely in the direction of the passenger door, and they get in with the Knight's Inn in their sights. The drive is at the end of a Californian day, all pink-gold dusks and amber yellow taillights. For a second he's convinced Holland falls asleep given the lull of the car in congested traffic but he stirs as their wheels crunch above gravel, pull into the hotel parking lot. He watches him climb out of the car and go into the adjoining front office to get their keys.

 

Once they've got the keys they look into the rooms where they'll be staying for two days and two nights and find nothing short of what the both of them were anticipating. It's reserved quarters, one double bed and a single table with chairs awaiting them, along with a dusty radio and water stained lamp. Jackson gets right down to business unpacking his things, settling in as best as he can while trying his hardest to look past the mysterious stains long inset on the table beneath his things.

 

The day falls away from them faster than they had anticipated. Soon it's all out nightfall, the hotel room pitch black save from the singular light keeping it alive in the corner. Jackson sits on the bed looking through case files, sorting them by importance and by recycling. Holland lies next to him with a respectable amount of distance between their sprawled out legs, looking for all the world like a bored child. He sputters and rolls up the discarded papers having lost Jackson's attention into neat little tubes. From time to time he yawns and after perhaps the fourth crack of his jaw Jackson makes a suggestion partly for his benefit, partly for him to get the hell out of his hair.

 

"I'll make you a deal," he says to Holland, not looking up past his reading glasses and making a black mark in the margin of one paragraph. Licking his thumb he flips to the next page and figures out just how to word his advice. "Go shower and I'll order takeout. It's only fair seeing as how you went to all the trouble to get us these…" A moth flitters past his line of vision and he blows it away with a noisy exhale out of his nose. "Arrangements." Holland looks up at him trying hard to blink away sleep. He does get up, grab a fresh set of clothes out of his overflowing duffel bag, and pads away to the shower.

 

In the meantime Jackson gets to work. He finds a phone book in the nightstand and makes a courteous call for takeout, as many noodles as they can get him for the last $20 in his wallet, and they grant him his wish with the promise it'll be there in a half an hour. Phone returned to its cradle Jackson tunes back in to the gentle quiet of the room, now replaced with the sound of running water and the soft rustle of clothes being chucked out of an open door.

 

He wishes he could stop the way his attentions go to Holland in the bathroom. But he does, he notices all too well the squealing sounds of a shower curtain being drawn back, the thump of two bare feet hitting the pink tile of the stall, the hushed singing Holland does as he bathes himself. Jackson laughs when he hears Holland try to take on both sides to a duet he's heard time and time again on some greatest hits radio station. Within the span of twenty minutes Jackson gets a performance featuring all genres of music. He finds out here that Holland quite likes show tunes, picking a selection from _Jesus Christ Superstar_ to mumble like a child hard at play as he cleans himself.

 

Holland emerges from the bathroom in a billow of smoke, white t-shirt and red boxers clinging slightly to his damp body. He gently crawls back onto the bed, moving over to what's become his side, taking the covers up and over himself to cover up legs being chilled by the ceiling fan overhead. When he rolls onto his stomach and lets his eyes drift close for longer than a few seconds Jackson knows he's gone for good, won't be getting up anytime soon to eat the Chinese food still warm on the nightstand.

 

"Are you tired?" he asks Holland, who shakes his head even as it lies heavily against the pillow, his wet hair swishing a little. Not even the headshake can negate the yawn that follows and Jackson sighs, shoves his part of the blankets to rest heavily against Holland's side. He watches Holland blink at him again, slow, like each motion adds another boulder to weigh down his eyelids and with it his tousled head. "…And he's gone." With that Holland slumps back down onto the bed in no state to argue with Jackson's observation.

 

Jackson gets out of bed to get ready to go to sleep, since he knows he would never want to be kept awake by a single light fostered by someone who can't bear to sleep in the same bed with the partner he might or might not have a thing for.

 

He brushes his teeth with the sink running, looks at the still wet shower with the promise to get one in the morning, and returns to the bed in a fresh set of sleep clothes. By now Holland is long gone, still rolled onto his side with one closed eye visible over the mound of sheets and blankets atop him. Jackson can see him breathing quietly, knocked out without much of anything to cause it, and he's taken aback by the slight tinge of envy that passes over him. There should be something wrong with that, that Holland could just completely pass out without any regard as to just who he was sleeping to. But Jackson can't linger on that now, not while he's about to fall asleep standing up himself.

 

As he climbs into bed, turning out the light to find the darkness makes him yawn as hard as Holland was doing with it on, he feels more at ease in bed with someone than by himself. For once there isn’t a fear of the unknown, an irrational terror that probably should have been left behind in childhood, one unsure of things developing outside that could pose a threat. In such close quarters he can feel, smell, hear things that might have slipped away from being detected by his senses in the daytime.

 

The bitter mint of Holland's mouthwash, the oddly sterile smell of his nightshirt when he moves against the hotel sheets in such a way as to send a wave of it up to Jackson's nose. What stands out the most in the assortment of sights and sounds is Holland's soft breathing, no unsightly snoring Jackson had anticipated from such a spirit. He'd had visions of Holland sleeping buck naked, breaths rasping in no way as quiet and subdued as they are now, so close to Jackson's collarbone as he turns a little in his sleep.

 

All things aside Jackson's tired. So he sleeps.

 

Though he's in a bed for rest, in nights past, that seems to have eluded him. He's never been one for bouts of solid sleep, waking up at odd hours with his heart pounding so hard the ache seemed to reverberate into the muscles of his arms, breath leaving him in gasps as his brain and body seem to have a disconnect with the wildness of his dreams. With Holland asleep beside him he blissfully dreams of nothing at all. For all he knows he could have been staring at a blank wall for nine hours as he sleeps.

 

Jackson wakes up the next morning in a haze. It's not quite daybreak as of yet, blue light filtering in through the windows. His head pounds with sleep still yet to be had and his chest feels peculiar and heavy. Looking down he sees Holland's blond head resting on his breastbone, hair a tangled mess as the result of going to sleep with a wet head, a hand loosely grasping Jackson's shirt.

 

And Jackson knows as a consequence he is unconsciously responding in a perhaps unsavory way. Beneath his share of covers is something he knows all too well as morning wood and he grimaces knowing being near Holland like this is what caused it.

 

Minutes pass like they're thick and coming out of a bottle. Holland sleeps on, impervious to the fact that he is lying almost entirely on Jackson, who is trying for all the world not to go out of his mind. He picks up one of Holland's limp hands, the one not gripping onto his shirt, and lets it flop back onto the mattress.

 

After a while Jackson's gripped with another urge – this one being the need to get up and piss – but he can't find it in himself to shove Holland off of him. So he drifts off to sleep for a few more minutes, feels Holland move around a little against him to settle high on his chest, face tucked into the slope of Jackson's neck and shoulder. Soon Jackson starts to feel smothered so he rears up onto one elbow, his other arm clutching Holland close enough to keep him from falling over, and tries shaking him loose. No dice.

 

"Holland," he whispers, trying again to pull his hand off of Jackson's shoulder. "Let go." Holland's hand only wraps around his and Jackson sighs, settles back down on the bed. He's not going to win this anytime soon. But Holland claims his own victory, in a way. Opening up his eyes just enough to get Jackson's face in his sights he leans forward and kisses him with all the precision and care a man half-asleep ought not to have.

 

Jackson pulls back without thinking. He's not doing this like this. There's no sense in taking pleasure in it when he's really the only one that's able to, given that he's wide awake and, you know, aware. Now Holland looks at him fully awake now, blinking slowly, stare slowly turning into a thing of disappointment after a few seconds of Jackson not responding. He runs one hand over his face, tries to act like he wasn't just fully in his partner's space on so many different levels. Then he opens his mouth.

 

"Sorry," Holland says and Jackson's taken aback how soft his voice is in the morning. Now he hates the way he's made this all out for and a few seconds after that he's already got the door to the shower in his sights. In an instant he maps out a way to safely dodge this issue for the rest of the morning, when he figures out this is something that can't be ignored.

 

Jackson raises his hands, declares, "Oh, fuck it," and cradles Holland's jaw in his hand as he kisses him. Holland tenses up for a second and it's instinct as to how he responds, hand pressed against Jackson's chest in solidarity. Fingernails scratch against the hair on his chest, dig in deep as the kiss does the same.

 

The only reason they both pull back is because it's become very clear that perhaps this isn't the time to sort out their things. Jackson looks past Holland at the clock on the table and based on his intel, the subject's long since been on the move. Giving Holland another kiss not unlike someone to their significant other he slides out of the bed on his way to the shower, thinking of all the ways he'll explore this after this damn case is done.


End file.
